Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!ndsuvax!ncreed
From: ncreed@ndsuvax.UUCP (Walter Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Anyone seen a good Amiga Pascal lately ?
Message-ID: <726@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Date: 18 Mar 88 08:51:06 GMT
References: <2688@crash.cts.com> <36386UH2@PSUVM>
Reply-To: ncreed@ndsuvax.UUCP (Walter Reed)
Organization: North Dakota State University  Fargo, ND
Lines: 36

In article <36386UH2@PSUVM> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>Nobody else has mentioned this:  There is an ad for UCSD Pascal in the
>latest Computer Discount catalog.  That's all I know.  Forget you've ever
>heard of me.
I have this pascal.  It is PECAN pascal.  Pecan pascal is one of the worst
piles of junk I have ever used.  All pecan pascal gives you is some degree
of portability between machines.  This portability is only for text output
and no graphics calls.  It can use the more common ROM routines, but none
of the others.  It is limited to 196608 bytes of code, and 64K of heap/stack.
It has graphics.library and dos.library calls, but thats it.  Devices
are access through "BIOS" (Yick, gag me with a function...) calls and are
not very versitile.  It seems as slow as uncompiled amigabasic when it is
compiled down to its "P-code."  Text output crawls along.  The editor is
terrible.  The manual for the amiga specific capabilties is not always right 
(as a matter of fact, it has tons of errors.)  It won't compile down to an
amigados runable program.  It has a mode called "native code generation" but
that isn't quite true (it still needs the P-code interpreter.)

I bought this hopeing that it would be useable for my classes, but it isn't.
BTW, they also changed the name of most of the function calls for no reason
at all.  I will have to say that the costomer service portion is OK.  I had 
the pleliminary version and so I called the up for an update.  The said that
it would cost $75 while my manual stated that it would be free.  Well, I 
sent in a copy of that manual page with the word "free" highlighted and
three weeks later (faster than Lattice update service) I got my new version.
This was about 8 months ago.  I haven't used it in 6 months.  Anyone want it?
Up for grabs....  I will probably just throw the thing in the trashcan.
Literally.



-- 
/* Walter Reed           UUCP  : uunet!ndsuvax!ncreed
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